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These are two exceptionally beautiful series, which portray decay and melancholy through images of a young man and woman wandering atop ruins, like songs without words. I can pick Rong Rong out of every image, whether he is naked or dressed in the bright cloak of a woman. But I had never met the girl who appeared with him, and so she has remained for me an abstract symbol, a ghost-like image existing only in the photographs. This image became real only at the moment when inri appeared. Then I understood. The melancholy that came before, the hesitation amidst the ruins—all were but expressions of Rong Rong’s expectation.
Perhaps that was in 2000, when we—my wife Judith, my daughter Lida, and I—became Rong Rong and inri’s friends. It was all so natural. She appeared in that courtyard in Liulitun, bearing the lightest tea on a small tray, smiling. “Tea,” she said (in her newly acquired Chinese). Then, turning to face the lazy cat roaming the courtyard, she smiled and said, “Cat.” But the pictures she made while in Tokyo allowed me to know the pre-Liulitun inri. That was a time of colorless pupils and convulsing bodies staring out of black-and-white photographs, a brilliant feminine face struggling toward collapse, shadowy urban spectacles of Tokyo emerging under streetlamps. There was no substance or weight, just the anticipation and anxiety before the climax and the weightlessness and collapse that followed.
These works are utterly different from the photographs she produced while living in Liulitun. The latter consist of innumerable fragments of daily life and piecemeal emotion, presented openly for the first time as galley proofs in an exhibition in New York’s Chamber Fine Arts in 2006. The vertical and horizontal rows of images have not been cut or edited. There is no spatial coherence or sequential narrative; the only constant is the eye behind the camera, that of inri, curiously observing the extent of her surroundings, and focusing mostly on Rong Rong, his eyes, his camera. I can understand why inri has not made these proofs into individual artworks, placing them into exquisite frames: these fragments are just her life, a life she had never before experienced and will never again experience.
These photographs also make me understand more deeply the last series of works in that exhibition: when their courtyard was razed to the ground along with all of Liulitun in 2002, Rong Rong and inri held a funeral for this place and a farewell to the “Liulitun Moment” in their own lives. This moment began when Rong Rong discovered “ruins” and ended with his encounter and union with inri. Once Liulitun had disappeared, they left this place that would never again exist, moving into a world without end. A batch of works reflecting youth and full of desire for beauty had been produced, marking a new transcendence. In my imagination, this transcendence is like that of the spring cicadas climbing arduously out of the ground, bit by bit up the trunks of tall trees, shedding their shells, and finally flying off into the blue sky. For this reason, when I curated their two-person show in the Great Furnace Room of Beijing’s Factory 798 in September 2003, I chose the name Tui-transfiguration as a poetic expression of this process of transcendence, and as a remembrance and recollection of their bygone days in the East Village, Tokyo, and Liulitun.
I titled the last part of the Tui-transfiguration “Rebirth,” and commented on it in the exhibition catalogue: “A fascination with beauty and youth is the dominant theme of the third section of the exhibition, which feature two groups of collaborative works that Rong Rong and inri created after they had found each other and fallen in love. As if reborn from ruins, nature, still unspoiled, comes back to life. The two photographers embrace this amazing world. Harmony has triumphed, struggle has subsided. Sensual pleasure has returned to become the main purpose for artistic creation; even the frozen, frightening winter landscape of Mt. Fuji inspires joy.”
First seen in the tranquil photographic images that these two artists created together in 2001 and 2002, this rebirth finally materialized in their founding of Sanyingtang---the Three Shadows Studio (the formal name is the Three Shadows Photography Art Center) at Caochangdi on the east edge of Beijing. Solely funded by themselves, this 4,600 sq meters complex is an ambitious undertaking with facilities including two large exhibition halls, a conference room, a library, darkrooms, a café, and spaces for outdoor activities. Ai Weiwei’s design further bestows the central building and surrounding yards with additional architectural significance. When the writer Sheila Melvin interviewed me in 2007 upon the Center’s opening, I told her that these two artists "have done something quite important. There are so many museums and galleries sponsored by companies or governments, but I think this is the first sponsored by artists---and for idealistic reasons." About the first exhibition the Center organized, called New Photo---Ten Years and co-curated by Zhang Li and me, I told Melvin again: "I suggested this show because I felt they first should establish a historical perspective. I also feel that China moves so fast that the artists don't always think---they have instinct and ambition, but they need to think about what is Chinese contemporary photography." Now in its second year, Sanyingtang has developed into a mature institution with a varied exhibition and education program, and has begun to attract wide attention internationally. This is not the only result of Rong Rong’s and inri’s rebirth, however: with the founding of the Sanyingtang they have also created a large body of photographs recording its emergence from Beijing’s frozen earth, as well as the expansion of their family: since the Liulitun Moment they have given birth to two children and are awaiting the third.
(This essay is partially translated by Philip Tinari.)
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